The story of Jesse and Frank James, the real-life robbers whose exploits earned them a Robin Hood reputation, has been portrayed in dozens of films more faithful to the myth than the history. Only in the revisionist 1970s did the romantic shadings come off in a few genre-busting examples (notably The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid and The Long Riders). Oddly enough, this 1996 feature takes more than a few factual liberties to restore the romantic portrait of the bank-robbing brothers. Four years after the Civil War, in a South crawling with carpetbaggers and occupied by Union troops, the hot-headed Jesse (Rob Lowe) and his clear-headed older brother Frank (Bill Paxton) take to the trail in a campaign of bank jobs, train robberies, and stagecoach holdups while evading the dogged efforts of Allan Pinkerton (William Atherton) and his detective agency. Writer-director Robert Boris presents the boys as heroes of the defeated South, gentleman robbers avenging the pillage of their people by the ruthless railroad and bank concerns pouring in from the North and pursued by a maniacally driven Pinkerton on a personal quest for revenge. In the wake of Clint Eastwood"s Unforgiven, Frank and Jesse comes off as old-fashioned and a little naive, but the measured pace and casting of country singer Randy Travis (who narrates and plays Cole Younger with a voice like molasses) gives the film, in moments, the intimacy of a ballad. --Sean Axmaker